Posted
by
Soulskill
on Tuesday May 31, 2011 @02:41AM
from the minimizing-inconvenience dept.

A reader writes with this excerpt from Ars Technica:
"A little over a week after its release, The Witcher 2 is getting its first patch, and with it all versions of the game will now be DRM free. 'Our approach to countering piracy is to incorporate superior value in the legal version,' explained development director Adam Badowski. 'This means it has to be superior in every respect: less troublesome to use and install, with full support, and with access to additional content and services. So, we felt keeping the DRM would mainly hurt our legitimate users. This is completely in line with what we said before the release of The Witcher 2. We felt DRM was necessary to prevent the game being pirated and leaked before release.'"

They don't mention that when the game first went on sale, the main selling point for the GOG version was that it "was the exclusive DRM-free version!"

This excuse is bullshit. It was marketing. They wanted more sales on the service they own, so they stuck everybody else with an inferior version and finally had to back down when it turned out to be breaking the game for too many customers.

Why is this "bullshit"? Did anyone stick a gun to your head and make you buy it off of Steam? You had the choice of the (IMHO superior) GOG version, with no need for crap running in the background (like Steam), incredibly easy to backup, and all around hassle free version, or you could buy the DRM version from Steam and D2D.

It was completely up to you which version you bought so don't bitch that 'Wahhh I had to make a choice, wahh!" especially when Steam has been allowing third parties like Ubisoft to add

Did anyone stick a gun to your head and make you buy it off of Steam? You had the choice of the (IMHO superior) GOG version, with no need for crap running in the background (like Steam), incredibly easy to backup, and all around hassle free version, or you could buy the DRM version from Steam and D2D.

You're forgetting that some users don't have good enough internet connections to download large games or just want the physical bits that come with the boxed edition. (The boxed version had DRM too by the way.)

Uhhh...hadn't tried GOG have you? Not only do they split the games into 1Gb chunks if you desire, but they also have an Adobe AIR app that lets you set bandwidth speeds, and resume broken downloads from where you left off, so even if you have an intermittent connection you can still buy from GOG.

That said if your net is so shitty you can't even download a single game you might seriously want to upgrade or even move. So much is becoming based around the net that not having a reliable broadband connection is

I thought there'd been plenty of announcements that only the GOG version would be DRM-free, and everything else would have DRM.

Of course it would have been way better if all versions had no DRM, but CDProject is not a major publisher, so it's quite possible that Atari demanded that they include DRM. Or maybe they decided to do that themselves for whatever strange reason. So yes, I guess they're not quite as noble as Stardock or the other few DRM-less publishers, but they're still way ahead of the likes of U

From what I gathered, their DRM implementation didn't really keep people from playing, but it was much slower than the non-DRM version of the game. A common fix going around message boards was to replace the DRM executable with the GOG version. Looks like they're just making that the "official" fix and spinning it. Can't say I blame them for it, really.

What the summary fails to mention is that the company still will actively be looking for pirates on torrent sites. Paradox Interactive's approach is not to bother at all, but rather provide those with unique CD-keys additional benefits.

Which is just another form of DRM and it makes the resell value of your game basically zero (which of course is the entire idea). 0-Day DLCs and forced online activation (so you get access to all the content you already paid for) are even worse than the other crap as they require you to give up personal info (to be able to sign up) to companies that have your privacy as a very high priority (hello Sony)

Heck the only personal info you give away is a custom login and a CD Key and an email address. You still can play the game without registration, you still can get the patches without registration, and given CDPs history you probably will get the additional content without registration in the long run as patch. (They did the same for the enhanced edition)All there is is that you get the DLC (which is free) early if you register.

This might be true in CDPR's case but they aren't exactly the norm when it comes to these kinds of things (they've proven to be nice guys that are passionate about their games, let's hope some big publisher doesn't come along and fuck them up *cough* EA *cough*), loads of games require registration and validation to get access to release day "DLCs" (EA/Bioware is starting to get on my nerves with this, for example) requiring varying amounts of personal information on signup and resulting in varying amounts

When I buy a used car I don't get the original owners warranty or any free stuff which may have come with the original purchase, free services, road tax, insurance offers etc. Not entirely sure why you think a secondhand purchase should be the same as buying new. Being as this is a relatively effective and less intrusive way of reducing piracy it's better this direction than others have taken.

If you can come up with a good solution to reducing piracy and rewarding genuine purchasers of software then you could make a lot of money.

Also when I buy a car I am generally required to give lots of personal information, are you suggesting that you should be able to just have software like a book. Well it comes with some services (online content, updates, support) and it is reasonable to request registration for such services.

You however seem to want the moon on a stick, which I am unable to assist you with.

When I buy a used car I don't get the original owners warranty or any free stuff which may have come with the original purchase, free services, road tax, insurance offers etc.

Perhaps it is different in the US, but in the UK you can transfer benefits like free services when you sell your car. Obviously they don't recreate the exact same sales package as they do for new games.

Pretending that this is the same as 0-day / new only offers in games is naive or misleading. I doubt many players have any issue at all

I don't understand why companies like EA don't simply make their games so they don't work at all if not bought new, or require a ~£5 payment to activate a 2nd hand copy. At least that would be clear, easy to understand and honest (even if I don't like it).

Epic Megagames did this with Bulletstorm.

I've been a paying customer of Epic Megagames since Epic Pinball, I've purchased every game they've ever made, some multiple times. They've made great progress, even introducing a female heroin (Jill of the Jungle) who saves the Prince to buck retarded gender roles. The were once a great company...

I have two Xbox360s and two game players in my home. Only one of us can be playing one copy of Bulletstorm at a time. The "game" servers are other players' consoles;

When the online content exist only to reduce a sale into a non-transferable personal license, don't expect consumers to be happy about it. Software licenses for single player games have all the essential characteristics of a sale - a one-time payment for a one-time delivery, except you don't get any of the rights and benefits of a sale.

When I buy a book it only rarely comes with half the pages stuck together, missing chapters or set to self destruct when you reach page x.It's also rare to have the book tell you : 'If you want to know what happened in chapters 3, 5 and 9, please send 10$ to the author now'.And buying a used car doesn't allow the manufacturer to prevent you from getting it registered.

"When I buy a used car I don't get the original owners warranty or any free stuff which may have come with the original purchase,"

really? you must suck at buying used cars.

My honda Civic came with the original warranty and the free oil changes that were left from the new car purchase. I even have the floor mats, manual, dvd, and the honda first aid kit that was in the back.

Not sure what brand you're buying. Maybe you need to buy a better car brand. When I bought my used car (private sale, not a dealer), it still had almost 2 years left on the warranty. And I know it transferred because I made use of it.

are you suggesting that you should be able to just have software like a book.

That's a fine idea. I should start a publishing company that sells you books; but, if you want to read all of the book, you're going to have to come to my website, agree to a 9000 word EULA, and bind your book serial key to your facebook account so I can verify that you are the only reader who gets to read the whole book.

After all, both products are only covered by copyright (meaning only I can copy, but anyone can resell), so the only way I can prevent you from loaning or reselling the book I sold you is t

I don't know where you live, but where I live, most dealerships offer at least 1-3 year depending warranties on used cars. The little el-shittio shop(aka fly-by-nights) may have deals with warranty farms for the same thing. So yes, if I buy I used car, at least in most of Canada? I have a warranty. And in general it's just as good as a new car.

Which part of the article you linked to said "Weill actively be looking for pirates on torrent sites"? All I see relating to the web in the article you linked to is this:
"This does not mean, however, that we support piracy or think it is ok to share our games freely over the web. We still believe people should pay for the games they play. After all, this is what keeps this industry running."
There's nothing I can find about pursuing pirates online, unless I am missing something? After reading the article

That's not a third option. Either you agree that it's worth the price, or you don't. That's the entire basis of trade, and has been for thousands of years. They have something you want (a game), and you have something that they want (money). Either you agree on an exchange rate (number of currency units per game), in which case you can make a trade, or you don't agree and you can't. The entitlement mentality, that if you disagree with the terms of the trade that you should be able to take what they are

Actually, the option 3 is the "sampler". In games, this would be the Demo.If you're not sure about the trade (is the quality sufficient, etc), then a small, limited quantity is supplied by the vendor to show the quality that you'll be paying for, and entice those who are reticent about the trade.But once you have the 'sampler', then yes, you're back at options 1 or 2. You shouldn't expect the whole cargo for free.For some reason though, some game companies seem to insist on placing DRM on the demo, which

If the game has DRM then it would be a gross misrepresentation not to put DRM on the demo, in my opinion. Considering how many installation/runtime errors DRM seems to be behind, it would be incredibly misleading to demo the product DRM-free and then sell an encumbered version - that totally fails to demonstrate to me that the game will run on my system. It was this kind of garbage that convinced me to leave the PC gaming scene and switch to console several years ago (aside from one or two games that either

There used to be a pretty decent trade in going up the side of a mountain, bringing down a block of ice, and selling chunks out of it. Then along came freezers, and everyone could make a "copy" of that ice chunk right in their own home. Now ice hauling is no longer a viable business model. Times change, technology disrupts, and sometimes something that was once lucrative becomes superfluous or worthless.

The selling copies model is dead, and it's only thrashing at all through enforced monopoly (a

There are already other models out there for delivering games without charging an up front fee - subscription models, free games with a built in market to sell in-game content, ad sponsored games, games where you pay a subscription to a third party for an all you can eat rental affair, community developed free games. Claiming that games wouldn't exist if people weren't paying up front for them is just the kind of short sighted behaviour the companies behind those games are demonstrating, and it doesn't chan

Well are you just advocating that games not be developed at all then? I mean I fully agree with and back the people that say games need to come down in price drastically and hope to make up for it with quantity, but you more or less seem to be advocating a system of "just pray for donations". With the amount of investment that goes into a game, that just isn't going to work, you've still got 50 developers to pay. Don't like what the big guys are charging, play the indi games that are out, if you succeed in

It could look like what you say. Or we could see more open source games, or more online ones, or free/ad-supported, or any combination thereof, or things no one's even thought of yet. (Think how much different the world looks in 2011 than we imagined it would in 2001, let alone 1991!)

I can't tell you exactly what the new era will look like. If I were that good, I'd be awfully rich. I can tell you, however, that it will not look like the "pay per copy" model of the last century. That paradigm died the moment

There is still scarcity. The creativity is the scarce resource. When you buy a game, you are paying for someone to create it - the payment for the copy is incidental. If you disagree with selling copies as a mechanism for funding the creative endeavour, then put your money where your mouth is and pay groups that release their creative output under a license that permits redistribution. Don't just say 'I disagree with how you fund your creativity, therefore I am entitled to your creative output for free'

I guess the most difficult part here is having two levels of game contents in your game.

That's not hard. Games that are a playable demo without a key and turn into the full game when you purchase a key, are well-established technology. The real problem with your idea is downgrading existing keys for single-player desktop games.

And paying the support costs for all the legitimate customers who are getting screwed over by the DRM that's failing to do what it's there for (unless the company comes up with DRM that is hassle free, but as far as I can see, if they ever managed that they'd probably make more money selling the DRM than the game).

Seriously, when will companies acknowledge that if DRM is failing to stop people cracking the game AND it's costing money to develop/implement AND it's costing money to support AND potentially lo

Paradox are pretty much pioneers at scummy regional pricing (e.g. $1USD=$3NZD, and $1USD=$1EUR, despite the exchange rates being nothing like that) - when they even deign to sell to you at all, so they can shove it too.

We already knew that from the previous Witcher, which was notorious for the insane loading times (up to 5minutes in some cases!) and crashes caused by the DRM. Good thing they removed it eventually (and fixed a bunch of other issues with the game). Shame they didn't just release the second installment entirely DRM free through all channels to start with though, guess the publishers still had to have their way.

It was mainly the publisher, the CDProject guys never were happy about the DRM to begin with. Btw. the same goes for the price fixing on the publishers side. They wanted the same price for Europe and the USA, the publisher wanted to charge more in Europe and hence GOG (which is owned by the same company as CDProject) simply gave refunds for various other games in their catalogue to make up for the price difference.CDProject are really nice guys and I hope they sell a load of games everyone who pirates this

Personally I love ordering from amazon.co.uk to Norway. Since it's just below the 200 NOK import duty limit and amazon gives me free shipping, I got the DVD version for about 22.86 euro, or less than half than on Steam's 49.99 euro. Steam is silly expensive, they just got people hooked.

This is a new take on DRM and piracy. On the plus its temporary, BUT if it fails to prevent being cracked before the release it could just annoy legit buyers for a week. I for one think its an interesting and positive strategy. They could gain with day 1 sales, and legit buyers get a DRM free product in 1 week. Personally I would put up with it, some may disagree. If you are super anti-drm simply wait 1 week before playing. Seems like a new, positive step in the right direction, and I'm at least happy to see a company try something new.

I think I am one of those super anti-drm people - but I agree with you. I just wouldn't buy the game until the DRM has been removed. When the DRM has been removed, my concerns are gone and I'll be happy to pay money for it. Ok, I'll have to wait one more week, but I can deal with that.

The problem is that the game on the DVD will still have the DRM and you have to deal with it. For instance, I own DIRT 1. It has tons of on DVD DRM that, later can be removed by patch. However, I can't install the game without it wanting to install all the DRM tools in the first place.

EXACTLY what I was thinking. I can see the patch removing the need to be online/what-ever while playing, but 50% of DRM issues are encountered at INSTALL TIME. Hopefully this means that future sales of the game will come without the DRM to start with (sort of a patch slipstream). As for already purchased copies, I hope they make some tools to make installation as easy as possible.

Actually, this is a PERFECT example of how DRM is useless. If the game company is able to make a patch to remove the DRM of a

The thing is, they saved money with this move. Vast majority of issues with the game that strained their tech support was DRM problems. They either had to massively up the tech support costs or drop DRM.

And with the fact that cracked game ran much better because it stripped DRM, they were left with very little realistic choices.

Who buys games on release day anyway? Not only is there DRM to deal with, but prices are highest then too. It's not like you miss anything by waiting 6 months for the price to drop. There are plenty of other games to keep you occupied until then.

Depends on the game - the strategy we're starting to see more of now is DLC content free with pre-orders, paid for everyone else. I suspect it's things like that that drive a lot of day one sales for most games (aside from the odd anomalous "Triple A" title that everyone wants to play right away). If you know you'll be getting the game anyway, and the price of the DLC is greater than what you expect the price drop to be in six months, it still makes sense to buy it early.

That's totally in line with what copy protection schemes are actually expected to provide for the publisher. No (good) manufacturer of copy protection software claims that their scheme is unbreakable. It can be done with time and effort. Their goal is to extend this time span so far that the initial release sales peak is covered as much as possible, i.e. cracks start spreading only after a majority of the copies have been sold. After that it doesn't matter if the protection stays or gets removed.

The other thing it gains is that they don't have to support unlocking the game in perpetuity. I'm surprised companies like EA haven't figured out that their profits would go up if they didn't have to support a call center for people who installed Spore more than 5 times.

Wow, I'm really liking this move, and I think it makes sense. Still, quite admirable that they don't leave the DRM on there for longer.
The first few weeks is when a game is most at risk of being pirated. Nonetheless, this game is already on several torrent sites, so it's not as if the DRM worked in the first place.

Actually Penny Arcades view is not entirely correct. First the fight is not the first one, it is just the first one if you play that submission before another one which comes earlier int he intro story.Secondly, the game has in game help but in the middle of a fight it is hard to read the hings, but luckily they are also stored in the journal and there is also a manual which explains a lot.There is only one thing which the game definitely does not do, it does not do handholding and you cannot master the fig

The points you mention in your first paragraph are addressed in the PA article - the comic is exaggerated for comedic effect (the first game was similar, you could run around and fight things and always run away if they were too powerful, but the unavoidable fight at the end of the first village was tough if you went into it underpowered, and unavoidable if you went into it too early, it was a "point of no return" situation).

As for dying 47 times, he does also mention that he was trying to do something that

And there's no indication that you should play the intros in the order given. I picked the dragon one also, because it sounded cool. Very shortly after that I was nearly ready to snap the disk in half.

Nonetheless, this game is already on several torrent sites, so it's not as if the DRM worked in the first place.

As others have mentioned here, this game was always available without DRM if you bought it from GOG.com [gog.com]. Presumable it was this version that got pirated. Even if it wasn't that version, I doubt that they paid top dollar for the best DRM solution if they knew that they would abandon it so soon.

I just noticed something annoying. When you go to the page that I referenced above from an Australian IP address, you end up paying over US$75 for the game. Bloody region crap! I wont blame GOG for this too much, as I

GOG no longer relies on IP geolocation services to determine what country you're in, although they use it as an initial determinant. But if you happen to have one of the very very many IP addresses that are "incorrectly" identified as Australian, you can go into your profile and tell them what country you're "really" in.

Strangely enough, GOG decided to stop relying on geolocation services shortly after they were forced to give higher prices to Australians on The Witcher 2 by the local publisher.

1. Version that was pirated first was DVD version.2. Game included two layers of protection:a. You must activate the game onlineb. Securom protection

There was a crack for both in the DVD version that was online the day after release. Funnily many of people who bought DVD version like myself, ended up getting the crack to strip securom because it caused so many problems.

P.S. As far as I know, online activation part of DRM is still in the game, even after this patch.

The DRM was causing severe issues with the game. The only logical move they could make aside from telling their users tough luck was to remove the DRM.

It's certainly a nice story but it's not for the right reasons. They're just aiming for some good press by putting a positive spin on the fact that their DRM was defective to the point of breaking the game for its users.

Actually, they always intended to remove the DRM ASAP. I have been a supporter of CD Projekt since they took similar action with The Witcher 1 (removing the godawful TAGES crap).Originally it was their intent to have no DRM on the Witcher 2. When I found out they did a U-turn on that (a month or two ago) I contacted their customer support to express my disappointment. I got a very nice e-mail back telling me exactly why they included DRM on some versions of the game (publishing requirements, stopping before

"Godawful TAGES crap" stayed in the game up to version 1.4, at which point they got tired of paying for tech support having to keep answering people about problems with it.

Witcher 2 DRM was pure marketing. GoG got "exclusive DRM free" game which is sold for more then many other retailers, and everyone else got screwed by broken securom, which apparently caused vast majority of technical issues with the game. Just like original.

This time, folks at CD Project decided they didn't want to pay too much for tech

It's certainly a nice story but it's not for the right reasons. They're just aiming for some good press by putting a positive spin on the fact that their DRM was defective to the point of breaking the game for its users.

While that's true, they sold the game DRM-free from day one through gog.com. From what I understand the DRM was only there because the retail publisher demanded it.

And from what I've read the DRM was cracked by day zero, as the Polish retail version was available a day before the rest of the world and apparently available on torrent sites.

CD Projekt, the developer/publisher of the game, also owns GOG.com. The version they sold themselves was completely DRM-free, as is every other game on GOG. Why do you think that is? It's because, like they said, they have a stance against DRM. They hate it as much as we do, and they removed it very shortly after release not just because it caused issues, but because they never planned to keep the DRM on all versions of the game (which would that be stupidly inconsistent if they didn't remove it). What evid

About time - maybe they learned something from customer feedback about the first game which is a pile of drm-facepalms. The DVD version has protection that won't work on 64bit Windows7 machines properly. It also has server-authentication. And good luck with their customer support, I think they try their best but English is not in my experience the language you will get serviced the best.

I have bought Witcher 1 a few days ago, its Platinium edition or whatnot, patched to latest 1.5 and DRM free. No need for any activation or whatever, but I hear it was bad before they removed DRM. Back in the days I doubt they expected it would get much attention outside of Poland, so they might have lacked ENG support - it was pretty big surprise for everyone, that this game got so popular. Witcher was well known even before its got its game here - heck, my dad knows Witcher, so their target market was loc

Well, I have the DVD which doesn't install on Windows7 64bit - it is so bad that it once messed totally up my DVD drive and I had to dig through forums to find uninstall for the DRM driver. So not very funny because there is chicken-egg problem here. But if I get adventurous I'll try if I can manage to get the 1.5 patch installed without ruining my access to DVD's.

Right now the GOG version of 2 does it for me (it was expensive compared to retail but DRM-free from day 1 so I bought it despite my lack of conf

Been DRM-free from day one on gog.com. So no big surprise there, also the idea that you need DRM to protect it before release is not meaningful. Encrypt the whole thing, release a universal one-key-to-decrypt-them-all on release day.

I read about this a couple of days ago. I wasn't sure if I was going to buy the game or not, with a wife, kids, and career I have to be careful where my gaming dollars go. As soon as I read this I went out and bought the game, if for no other reason than to encourage more acts like this and I couldn't be more pleased. It's a fun and beautiful game.

If I'm not mistaken, Atari has been publishing CDProjekt Red's games; I'd like to hear their opinions on this whole ordeal. It's not that surprising to see a developer against DRM, it'd be interesting to hear the same from a major publisher.

Most pre-release games come from people working at factory level. People that can swipe a freshly pressed disc. Alphas and Betas are the ones that are either leaked internally, or hacked (like we saw with Half-Life 2).

What online activation could help with is reducing the risk of usable copies being leaked in the time between "going gold" and release. For example if the online activation scheme involved encrypting the copy on the disc with the decryption key released through the activation servers and the activation servers were configured only to accept special test keys before release then the set of people who could leak the game code/data before release could be limited

Or maybe, they just couldnt get the game to run properly with the DRM they never intended to remove (because well DRM sucks and has a habit of wrecking things), and they thought they could create some positive spin by removing it to fix a broken game.... who knows *shrug*

That could be it. Mind you, the game was available without DRM right from the start, and widely publicized as such, so I think the complete story is that retail publishers demanded that they include DRM, they didn't get it working properly, and after release they dropped it as soon as they could.

At the time of your posting, CD Project had already released a patch that upgrades the retail version of the original Witcher to the Enhanced Edition without checking registration.

But the only way that I know this is because I read a bit of Polish. As far as I know, there is no announcement in English and a bunch of frustrated people are complaining about being unable to play the original Witcher.

Just in case someone wants to reinstall the original Witcher: The Patch 1.4 on this page http://www.en.thewitcher.com/the-witcher/1/ [thewitcher.com] will remove the DRM that comes on the retail CD. You will need to download the appropriate language patch in the same directory. And then you can apply patch 1.5 for extra content.

CD Project are trying. They fucked up big time with the registration servers, but I do not think it was trough malice. Never attribute to malice that which, yada, yada...

Actually, it didn't. I had this game installed for about an hour. Then removed it. So, it was (lack of) quality instead of DRM that prevented me from using it.I'm happy, i got the pirated version instead of paying then throwing it away.

I'm not so sure that the first hour of a pirated, hardcore CRPG is a good indicator of whether or not the game is worth playing (especially since, due to being pirated, it might have issues in it not in the official release). A lot of very good games had slow starts, including many Zelda games (especially Twilight Princess), Final Fantasy XII (which got great critical acclaim, even a perfect Famitsu score, despite it's slow start), the Monster Hunter series (I've put 11 hours into Monster Hunter Tri and I h